How to get out of going to school – Lesson One

I couldn’t believe it was already the end of the summer holidays. We came back from the Vendee last Saturday and school started today so I was running about during the intervening days trying to prepare. We spent hours in the stationery shop getting all the obligatory pens and pencils for school – note to self: don’t get the kids to choose their own, they will without fail always choose the most expensive ballpoint pen you ever saw in your life. Why have a 20p Bic biro when you could have a 5€ Barbie ballpoint with bits of plastic and feathers dangling off it? We practised getting up before lunchtime a few days so the 7am wake-up call on the big day wouldn’t send everyone into a tailspin. Yesterday Poppet and Pickle were up at 7.15 and fed and watered in good time for the school-run so we had an inspection at 8.10, our normal departure time. One slight flaw was that they were both naked as all the clothes are still in the laundry after the holiday. I swear all the clothes are breeding while my back is turned. Nobby and I have done so many washes and there is still a heap in the spare room and you don’t even want to know about the ironing mountain. Suffice to say I caught sight of snow on the upper peaks the other day so it might be time to break out the crampons before eagles start nesting on it.

Anyway, all was going well, the house was gradually getting cleaner, the children were getting over the trauma of leaving their new group of friends behind at the holiday resort and we’d caught up with a few friends in the neighbourhood. Sure there were a few curve balls like the flush on the downstairs loo suddenly breaking while we had a houseful of kids, and the vacuum cleaner having a nervous breakdown over the amount of sand I wanted it to suck out of the car. Then yesterday we were over at Peony’s new house being introduced to her new puppy and we decided to go to a fun park which boasts a huge inflatable with a slide at the end of it and a variety of bikes and cars and things to play on. Pickle had his birthday party there in July so we knew they’d enjoy it and get thoroughly worn out for a good night’s sleep before the return to school. What we weren’t counting on was my 6 year-old, Poppet, jumping off the top of the slide, landing badly and breaking her leg. Yes, I watched my child break her leg yesterday. The irony is she’s been climbing trees and mucking about on bunk beds for 2 weeks on holiday without so much as a scratch but half and hour on a bouncy castle and its sirens all the way to the hospital. So that’s how you get out of going back to school! There were good parts to the aftermath such as the superbly hunky ‘pompiers’ who turned up in the ambulance and carried her off on a stretcher and the blatant queue-jumping for a cubicle in A&E while the trolleys were stacked up in the corridors. The bad bit was seeing my little girl in so much pain – they eventually gave her laughing gas while they set the bone and that was very amusing afterwards when she was all giddy and chatty. I’m so proud of how brave she was and thankful that it was a clean break. As I keep telling myself, it could have been a lot worse. Now all I have to get used to is being her slave until she decides to give the crutches a go and get her backside off the sofa. I mean, who wouldn’t take the chance to languish in front of the TV all day with Mummy at your beck and call, peeling your grapes, carrying you to the loo and wiping your bum? I’m currently taking the reverse psychology route and hoping that if I tell her to stay lying down she’ll want to get up – we’re usually at similar odds so we’ll see what happens.

Anyway, so there we have it, 'c’arrive' (it happens) and it concludes a summer where Sod’s Law has well and truly reigned. Like Alanis Morrisette sang ‘Isn’t it Ironic?’, only I’m not sure she went far enough in my opinion and I suppose ‘Isn’t it Just Sod’s Law’ wouldn’t have had the same ring to it.

‘It’s like rain on your holiday,
a nasty smell when you’ve cleaned and cleaned,
it’s like ten thousand road-signs to Rouen when all you need is one to Paris,
or falling out of trees for weeks on end, then busting your leg on a bouncy castle.’

How many sleeps left till the holidays?

Nobby sent me for a loop this morning. He decided to get all his clothes ready for packing last night so I woke up this morning in a total panic convinced that I needed to get everything packed today. I’d been locked in suitcase hell for most of the morning, punctuated by wild demands from the restless children who I really think I going to kill each other at some point. Pickle was chasing after Poppet with a very noisy ray gun and she was teasing him mercilessly by making up nursery rhymes about him and singing them in a mocking voice. He then hits her and she screams but doesn’t hit back. I wonder if one day she will lose it and give him an almighty thump and things might calm down for a bit. If I don’t knock their heads together first. Or end up in the Funny Farm, because, of course, we are not leaving until the day after tomorrow so I actually had another 24 hours to decide how much junk to take this time. So I did in fact have time to move all the furniture round in Poppet’s bedroom as she requested and I did have time to add more cardboard furniture to Boo-Boos little house for Pickle. So far since I last reported on the junk-modelling project we have added a turbo-boosted rocket bike for the two pet monkeys complete with a luggage compartment full of miniature rolls of sticky tape which they apparently sell door-to-door. Poppet made a convincing articulated lorry to transport her life-sized guinea-pig soft toy around in and I have been working on an elevator so that Boo-Boo can get up to the upstairs bedroom more easily.

I am thinking of putting in my application to Blue Peter quite soon.

Or I might join the ‘How Clean Is Your House’ team instead after bowing to pressure and reorganising Poppet’s room for her. Egad! it was filthy down behind all the furniture. And I discovered upon moving the bed that the snot painting went a lot further down the wall than I previously realised. How exactly do you get hardened mucus off the walls? The children were quite a help with the removals at first. Pickle is a dab hand with the duster and vacuum but he had to give up when he fell off the bed inside the princess tent which was temporarily resting on top of it. He didn’t damage himself too much, just a scratch on his cheek but he sat there sobbing ‘I hope I can still eat, otherwise I’ll just have to die’. (I’m not sure where the current morbid streak comes from but they are both at it lately. Poppet completely freaked her brother while they were sharing a room on holiday by recanting some dream of hers where a dog bit his hand off. I came in to check on them to find him weeping inconsolably lamenting ‘You shouldn’t tell me things like that. I’m only 5, I’m just a child.’) Poppet was reasonably helpful at clearing the floor but she gets easily side-tracked and spent a lot of the time nursing her Baby Annabelle doll who she claimed was upset by all the dust. It’s really sweet to watch her playing Mummies. I wish she didn’t have to do all the sound effects though, especially the high-pitched crying every 10 minutes. I just hope she doesn’t insist on bringing Annabelle and all her paraphernalia on holiday with us. She filled the back seat of the car earlier with the pushchair, feeding kit and change bag when we went to visit Nobby at his office. When he invited her to come in and see where he spends his working day I don’t think he was banking on carrying a pink buggy and a life-sized dolly past all his colleagues. Luckily she was persuaded to leave it all in the car and just took the guinea pig instead.

And I went shopping, hee hee! I was treated to both ends of the French ‘Customer Service’ spectrum while I was there. (sorry, I feel a mini-rant coming on, bear with me.) I was in the sports shop looking for UV suits for the kids in case we actually get some sun next week. I couldn’t find the size I wanted so I took a suit up to the Inquiries desk and asked if they had a pink one in size 8. I was informed that I had to find a member of staff on the shop floor for stock inquiries. (So what’s the desk for then??) The person I found was most unhappy at being dragged away from the young hunk she was helping to put up new shelves and marched round to the UV-suit section, took a quick glance in the empty Size 8 bin and told me ‘Non’. Er, I’m only English, not blind or stupid, I could see that for myself. I asked if there were any in stock, she told me all stock was out on the shelves. So why didn’t the other bl**dy women on the desk tell me that in the first place?! Gah! It’s enough to give you total trolley rage.

So I went along to the lingerie shop feeling I owed myself a treat after that performance, plus given my current waistline crisis I felt I ought to get some extra boost so the tummy can look flatter. (Trinny and Susannah swear by getting the right fitting boulder-holder so it’s worth a try). I was pounced on as soon as I got in the door by a lady, clearly on commission, who wanted to know what I was looking for. Unfortunately I had a mental blank at that point completely forgetting the French for ‘lift and separate’. She was a tacit professional though and soon sorted me out with a good selection without shouting my size too loudly round the store and even left me alone to try them on (for which I was profoundly grateful; I’m not up for the full Trinny & Susannah chummy tit-grabbing experience yet). So after that faultless piece of service I don’t know why the sports shop woman had to be so grumpy. Even the security guard there had said ‘Bonjour’ to me as I walked in, it’s sort of customary in most French shops to greet the shoppers and say goodbye when they leave. It was very noticeably absent when I went back to the UK. Maybe that’s her problem, she knew I was a Brit and wanted to make me feel at home. Thanks but the weather is already doing that.

Anyway, I am sapped of all energy now as it’s been a bit of a madhouse this evening what with picking Nobby and Poppet up from work, crow-barring Pickle out of his friend’s house, getting everyone fed and fixing the boiler which was throwing it’s monthly hissy fit and refusing to heat any water for the children’s bath. I swear that thing is female; I bet these breakdowns are on a lunar cycle. I feel the need to park it for a little bit, and maybe chomp a few biscuits which are only going to go off if I leave them in the cupboard while we’re gone. Rude not to really.

Legs Bums and Tums (and Boobs)

I am pleased to report that I don’t ache too much after our marathon bike-ride yesterday. And Poppet hasn’t repeated the naughty word I used when I asked her to stop asking questions while I was panting my way up the hill (well, not to me anyway). However I still felt the need to don the Bridget Jones pants again this morning before going out in public. I also decided to dig out a body-toning and ‘abs’ exercise sequence I received from some American fitness instructor just after Christmas as part of a 6 week on-line challenge I signed up for to beat the post-Christmas bloat. (I actually spent Christmas in France not the UK but perhaps there is a pattern emerging here…?) Throughout January I faithfully stuck to the daily schedule and industriously read every motivational email that plopped into my Inbox each morning… yeah, did I heck-as-like. Hence the need to *dig* it out - from the deepest, darkest depths of my email archive. It’s a nice, short, easy-ish routine, now I’ve finally tried it, although I had to laugh when it suggested using cans of baked beans for ‘increased resistance’ when doing the bicep and triceps curls. I think baked beans are part of the reason I’m in this mess in the first place! Luckily I found some old dumb-bells in the dark recesses under my bed so I don’t have to look temptation in the eye when I am supposed to be working out. Exercise makes me hungry enough as it is. I am staying away from the scales too. I very rarely weigh myself. Being one of these saddos who hangs on to the same clothes year-in-year-out I pretty much know when something needs to be done when the waistbands start to bite. That and the straightforward test of looking straight down to check whether I can see my belly beyond my boobs. It’s simple but effective. Nothing is scarier than the realisation that your wobbly tummy is entering the room 5 minutes before your nips. It hasn’t got quite that bad yet but I do remember the horrible moment during my first pregnancy when the bump overtook the oversized bust I had suddenly developed even before I wee-ed on the stick to confirm I was knocked- up in the first place. And then of course my waist disappeared and my belly button turned inside out and the degradation was complete. These days the old ‘rack’ isn’t quite as impressive which means the flab doesn’t have so far to go now, although I’m far from the ironing-board-with-a-pair-of-Smarties figure.

Well, hopefully my toning routine and some more bike rides will help along with our return to more sensible eating now we are out of reach of Tescos. I’m even trying those new exercise shoes which are supposed to tone and slim as you walk around at your daily tasks. And perhaps they will – when I’ve found enough balance to be able to let go of the wall. But for now the couch is beckoning instead, as are my comfy slippers. I wonder what’s on the box? (Pity we can’t get the slimming channels over here – maybe Paul McKenna could help us get the kids to sleep before midnight?!)

No, you don’t lose weight running around after the children.

I read an article in the paper last week which said that entertaining kids all day for weeks and weeks during the long summer holidays has been driving some women to drink. Well I haven’t hit the bottle just yet (well not tonight so far anyway) but I can identify with what they mean. It’s taking all my powers of creativity to keep the little beggars occupied so they’re not knocking the crap out of each other or slowly baking their brains in front of the TV or computer. I didn’t realise how easy I’d had it while we were on holiday but now there are no grandparents around and Nobby is back at work (lucky b*stard) it’s becoming a real test.

I have had some success with ‘junk modelling’ - using old food packets and cardboard boxes to create new and interesting toys (also known as the miser’s free alternative to Playmobil with the added bonus that you can chuck it away when the little darlings have had enough it after 5 minutes rather than filling the house with overpriced moulded plastic that nobody plays with). Pickle especially loves it as it appeals to his ‘inventing’ streak and Poppet likes to join in when all the work is done and she can move her toys in and make up stories. So far this week we have made a rocket ship for Boo-Boo Bear (and his side-kick Baby Boo-Boo) complete with space helmets and rocket-packs followed by a two-storey bachelor pad for their visits home to planet earth. Poppet muscled in on the ‘cottage’ with some of her dollies who, having no interest in exploring the universe, have taken up residence as squatters in the spare bedroom with a Fruit Joy frozen lolly box for a bed. Pickle couldn’t decide between Uncle Ben’s Rice or Atora Suet as the best packet for a wide-screen television so he’s opted for the wall projector cinema screen instead and stuck a huge picture of Batman on the wall. (He’s definitely not invited next time we go to Curry’s)

But really the main problem with my two is still bedtime and it’s not the ‘going to bed before the sun’ excuse any more. They just don’t want to stop playing. Poppet was messing about with her Barbies until 2am last night, even though Nobby and I went turned in at midnight. I don’t know where she gets the energy from – or why nocturnal Barbie games have to involve so much loud singing. And then the monkeys get up at 8am the next day to start playing all over again; ‘Lie-in’ is not in their vocabulary. In a bid to wear them out in the fresh air this evening we all went out for a bike ride after tea. I know that I am pretty exhausted myself after hauling myself plus a bike with a 20kg child on the back of it up the huge hill to the cycle trail. But I’m not sure it’s really done it for the kids, I can still hear them up and about in their rooms and it’s nearly 10pm.

A bike ride seemed like such a great idea of Nobby’s as we are both feeling the pinch a bit after over-indulging on the English fair last week. I could have done without Poppet’s running commentary from the child seat though as I limped up the interminable hill: ‘why are you going so slow Mummy?’, ‘why are you breathing so hard, Mummy?’, ‘why are we stopping again?’. YES! I am out of shape. I’ve been dreaming up all sorts of alternative reasons why my tummy isn’t quite fitting into my jeans any more. Perhaps it’s a phantom pregnancy? Or chronic water retention? But I think I need to face facts that I’m porking up. Hence the strenuous bike ride and the ‘slimming knickers’, à la Bridget Jones, that I dug out of the drawer this morning. (Sexy.) It’s not looking good for basking on the beaches next week; some do-gooder might decide I’m a whale and try to roll me back into the water. As luck would have it I did catch part of a revolutionary dieting TV programme on some obscure slimming channel at my Mum’s last week. Paul McKenna was telling an audience full of the dimensionally-challenged that they should eat what they want, when they want but stop when they are full. There was more to it than that I think and he was going to use some of his hypnotism techniques to help with cravings and addictions but, strangely enough: I fell asleep!

Dammit, looks like it’s the gym for me.

We’re back!!

What a fantastic break. I can’t believe it’s been two weeks already. It was so great to be back in England, apart from the floods of course. I had no struggles with the lingo, I could eat all my old favourite foods from Tescos (and make all my clothes just a little bit tighter) and no-one dinged the new car. Yes, we got it! The guy was even quite complimentary about the state of the Volvo, apart from the damaged bumper obviously, but he still let us have the S-Max. I didn’t get to drive it until we were through the tunnel however. After endlessly complaining about getting a ‘Mummy-mobile’ Nobby has been quite selfish about driving it at times. And he did get two rounds of golf in thanks to the massive boot so I think it’s now time he shut up and handed over the keys.

So now I am fighting with the un-packing, deep joy. Considering we are heading off again for another two weeks on Saturday it hardly seems worth undoing the suitcase. However Poppet is clamouring for the bag-load of second hand clothes she was given by a friend and Pickle needs all the little inventions he created out of cardboard that he insisted we bring home with us so I guess I need to tackle some of the bags. At least most of the washing is done thanks to my ever-efficient mum who will wash, dry and iron your cast-off clothes before they hit the floor! Bless her. She’s been an absolute angel giving us the run of her new house for the past week. The children repeated their territory-marking ritual as soon as they were through her front door and left a trail of toys all over the house. But the thing they ended up playing with the most was all the Lego – the same Lego kits I used to make when I should have been revising for my exams. Pickle built the town and Poppet made up stories about all the characters in it and they were occupied for hours.

After a night at Mums we headed off to the Cotwolds to a Holiday Park where we had snobbily turned down the luxury caravans in favour of a Pine-Lodge. We were glad we did, though, as we spent the afternoons cooped up drinking endless cups of hot tea and playing every game we could think of while the rain lashed against the windows and the lake-shore gradually crept closer and closer. I felt an odd kind of glee that our British summer holiday had such dismal weather, after all that’s how I spent a lot of holidays when I was a kid so why shouldn’t mine get the same treatment? (Aren’t I mean?) Luckily this holiday camp had an indoor swimming pool and an Entertainment Team so we did venture out to splash down the water slides and join in the Sammy Seahorse Club. Who could resist Bingo, Family ‘Name That Tune’, and ‘Deal or No Deal’? with an eight foot tall cuddly blue seahorse and his pals Tommy the Turtle and Larry the Lobster… took me right back to Pontins and the Blue-Coats, ahh.

After a week in the Cotswolds Nobby headed off to a Stag party while the kids and I hitched a lift with my parents back to their place then I took off - alone - on the train to meet Nobby in Exteter. I was quite looking forward to the two hour journey – just me, my I-pod and a good book with no kids in sight. The nice man who sold me my ticket told me First Class was going to be cheaper than a standard fare for some bizarre reason and that he reckoned carriage ‘H’ should be nice and quiet. Hmm, what a joker. Funnily enough all the mummies with kids were offered the same deal and I ended up back to back with a harassed mum on her own with 3 children, the youngest of which was still in nappies and trying to make his way around the carriage without touching the floor. As she dashed past me to retrieve him for the fifth time she gave me that defeated smile of the weary mum-on-her-own-with-the-kids and I thanked my lucky stars for my generous parents.

Nobby and I spent two very relaxing days in Cornwall at my Uncle’s and I got to hear all the gory details about the Stag party. Did you know there are 3 topless bars in Bournemouth? One called ‘For Your Eyes Only’, another called ‘Spearmint Rhino’ and the newest one is simply called ‘Wiggle’. Love it. (And so did the groom-to-be by the sound of it.) Then we came back to my Mum’s for the rest of the week, seeing various people each day and hearing all about their day out at Legoland with my sister and all the other lovely things they had been doing while their parents swanned off without them. I don’t think they’d even noticed we were gone. They made up some great games in the garden once the sun came out, although I’m not sure the fish enjoyed ‘Fill The Pond Up With Stones’ or ‘How Deep is That Pond Anyway?’. Pickle invented an interesting one; he shoved a stick down the back of his trousers, offered it to his sister saying ‘light my fuse!’ – he was a firework! Soon after that the stick became a tail and Pickle was now a kitten crawling round the patio. It didn’t take much longer for him to revert to type, though, and decide the stick was best suited as a weapon to beat his sister with. Ah, little boys.

So we left for France on Saturday morning, having managed to cram all our gear in the car without popping the roof off. By the evening I was back in the local supermarket stocking up on supplies and missing Tesco’s already. I managed a little French at the checkout but it is weird to be back.

But it’s pelting rain outside now so I feel right at home.